Check Out The 3 Surprising Questions Apple Asks About Every Job Candidate

Apple is set to open 40 new retail stores this year alone. As a result, the company is now among one of the few retailers that are hiring employees in a big way. However, the Cupertino giant pays close attention to how it hires winning personalities for its industry leading retail stores, reveals an interesting story by The Forbes. The story notes that Apple Store is not just about how it looks and feels but instead, the company focuses on hiring the very best people who are passionately committed to the brand and the customer experience.

The most interesting part of Apple’s hiring process is that all hiring managers at the App Store must answer three questions on every potential candidate’s referral form, which are intended to gauge the candidates’ ability to provide a superior customer experience.

1. Do they display grit? Grit is the ability to perform under pressure, especially in “ambiguous” situations where clear answers might be elusive. Grit is courage and confidence. There’s a difference between confidence and arrogance. An arrogant job candidate says, “I know everything about the MacBook Pro.” A confident candidate says, ‘There are a lot of things I don’t know but I can find the answer.’ A person displays grit when they acknowledge what they don’t know but are determined to learn.

2. Can the candidate offer a Ritz-Carlton level of customer service? This question measures the candidate’s ability to provide transformational experiences. The Apple Store simply wants to know if the person being considered has customer service skills up to par with its standards. The Apple Store doesn’t want to hear a job candidate say, ‘I love customer service.’ Instead they want to hear, “I take every opportunity to wow a customer and here’s an example…” 

3. Could the candidate have gone toe-to-toe with Steve Jobs? This question implies that the candidate has a general idea about Apple’s products and technology. More important, Apple Store hiring managers want to know that a candidate has an opinion, can articulate it, and is willing to fight for it.“I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face,” Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson. “That’s the culture I tried to create. We are brutally honest with each other.”

It’s like someone said, “if you want to build a great team, hire Apple employees!“.

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